PARIS – The names of 12 of the 14 known Maine soldiers who have been listed as prisoners of war or missing in action in Vietnam were read at Tuesday’s Veterans Day service at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in Paris.

“It’s a short list,” Commander Alfred Healey of Anderson-Staples Post 112 in Oxford told the several hundred people as he read the names and their hometowns.

Although National POW/MIA Recognition Day was observed Sept. 19, Healey said he felt Tuesday’s program should include recognition of those men.

“It’s appropriate today,” he said.

The families of two of the missing requested their names not be read, which Healey honored.

Members of Post 112 and Foster-Carroll Post 72 of Paris and Stone-Smart Post 82 in Norway also participated in the program, which included a keynote address by state Rep. Jim Hamper, R-Oxford.

“Free elections are made possible by the soldiers who have fought to make us free,” Hamper said. The representative from District 100, which includes Oxford, Otisfield and Mechanic Falls, said the public can never repay the veterans for their services, but then they never asked to be repaid.

“We are the land of the free because of the brave,” he said referring to the soldiers. “It’s difficult to imagine what America would be like if we did not have the soldiers to fight for our freedom.”

Micah Hasslett of Oxford, a senior at the Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School, read “The American Creed,” a two-paragraph statement that pledges support for the country, its Constitution, laws, flag and to defend it against all enemies. It was written in 1917, the year that the United States entered into the first World War, by William Tyler Page as part of a patriotic contest.

Hasslett recently finished basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia after enlisting in the Army Reserve. After graduation, he will be going to South Carolina for his training as a mechanic.

Hasslett’s brother Garrett, a fourth-grade student at Oxford Elementary School and a member of Cub Scout Pack 196, also participated in the program, leading the Pledge of Allegiance.

Healey closed the ceremony with a few thoughts about veterans. “Men and women suffer together to meet a common goal,” he said of soldiers.

The benediction was given by Joseph Bernard, past commander of the Oxford American Legion Post. Eileen Walo of Auxiliary Unit 112 served as the poppy girl.